Economic Empowerment

3.

4.

5. Establishment of functional adult literacy and education programmes for the women street vendors, including the provision of teaching aids and materials during these education programmes.

The Government should formulate and implement policies, which guarantee equal access to education and training opportunities for disabled women street vendors.

Protective policies in the form of affordable loans, safer and cleaner vending markets, child care services, and public education can reduce the vulnerabilities of women street vendors at home and sustain their businesses.

According to the Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS) 2016/17, over 10 million women were recorded to be in the working age (14-64 years) with about 75 percent of them working compared to 82 percent of men. In line with this, the unemployment rate was observed to be higher for women (14.4 percent) than for men (6.2 percent). Despite the existence of the Equal Opportunities Commission Act, which promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment, occupational segregation is still high as women are often restricted to low-skilled and lower paying jobs and continue to earn less than their male counterparts. The median nominal monthly earnings for women was estimated to be UGX. 110,000 which is half the median nominal monthly earnings for men (UGX. 220,000). This can be attributed to the large number of women confined to lower paying jobs. Also important to note is that women’s labour is not adequately captured or recognised in the country’s national accounts.

Figure 1 below highlights some of the labour market disparities between men and women.

Source: National Labour Force Survey 2016/17

At its core, street vending is defined by a clear labour market failure: when high labour supply driven by rapid urbanisation and population growth coexist with low demand for low-skilled labour in the formal sector. Trading on the streets is often an obvious livelihood source for those who lack formal employment due to its low entry costs, its minimal capital and skill requirements and the access it provides to potential customers. Despite the socioeconomic exclusion that women street vendors face, their activities contribute to the formal sphere and are highly dependent on local and national patterns of supply and demand.

Most women street vendors are severely constrained by a lack of access to capital due to prohibitive interest

rates and collateral requirements imposed by formal banks, private moneylenders and even microfinance organisations, limiting their potential income growth in a trade that is already defined by high degrees of poverty and precariousness. Cooperatives represent a relatively cheap and effective grassroots structure that can support groups like women street vendors. SIHA supported the creation of women street vendors’ cooperatives that were anchored in the local community structures of each location: Wandegeya, Kawempe and Nakawa. These cooperatives have served as platforms that have amplified the women’s voices in different spaces and given them bargaining power.

Women have long been active in wage labour, subsistence farming and informal sector. However, legal and customary barriers to ownership of and access to land, use of natural resources, access to capital and credit, compounded with lack of opportunities, resources, training and skills, access to and use of technology, as well as wage differentials, all stand in the way of women’s economic progress.

Those who control economic policy in Government ignore the development needs of the majority of the population even as they pay lip-service to poverty alleviation. Therefore, women street vendors demand the following:

1.

2. The Government must promote and guarantee women’s economic rights and independence.

Economic policy must be based on equality in economic opportunities, and promote the economic empowerment of women starting from the household level, which is where women perform unpaid labour.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. Deliberate measures must be taken to boost cooperatives’ capital and access to markets.

Banks must come up with gender sensitive lending policies to enable women street vendors and their cooperatives to benefit from loans, so that women are not confined to microcredit societies.

To facilitate and enable women’s ownership of land for income generation, the Government must review property ownership laws and remove gender discriminatory elements that are protected or perpetuated in customary law systems.

The Government must ensure that budgetary allocations and expenditure plans take into consideration the unequal impact of poverty on women street vendors. It must facilitate, at all levels, more open, transparent and gender balanced budget processes.

The Government, jointly with development partners, must support women street vendors through capacity building and skills development for relevant technology and provide digital platforms such as the Market App through the Ministry of ICT.

8. The Government must implement the recommendations of the Beijing Platform For Action on the need to value unpaid care and domestic work in its System of National Accounts.

9. Sustained efforts must be made by the State and non-state actors to retain girls in schools, and to promote their participation in more technical subjects that equip them better for participating in wellpaid fields within the job market.

10. The Government must promote the economic rights of women by providing them with opportunities to improve their livelihoods. Such opportunities should specifically target poverty, and include access to the banking sector, land, technology and markets.